PRAYER PONCHO
PONCHOS ARE HAND-CROCHETED WITH MERINO WOOL AND HAND DYED WITH COFFEE, TEA, BERRIES AND HERBS.
EACH GARMENT IS HAND-CROCHETED BY AN ELDER.
OUR INTENTION IS TO BRING CONNECTION TO ISOLATED ELDERS.
THERE IS AN INFO CARD WITH EACH GARMENT THAT SHARES INFO ABOUT THE MAKER.
YOU CAN LEAVE NOTES FOR EACH OF THEM THAT WILL BE PRINTED OUT AND DELIVERED.
EACH GARMENT IS MADE WITH LOVE & PRAYERS AND PERFECT FOR MEDITATION OR WARMTH ON A CHILLY DAY.
ORIGIN STORY:
I love my grandma Betty Jane deeply and I could feel her loneliness and isolation in the last decade of her life. She was an avid knitter and taught me to sew and knit. My (ancestral) love is the key inspiration for this project and my concern for isolated elders. Below on the timeline I share other nodes from the Web of Love that brought this project to full manifestation in its current form and recent NYT article about soft armor, that I love.
TIMELINE
TIMELINE:
1980 Carrie Mae learns to knit with her mom, Jean Marie, and her grandma, Betty Jane.
2004-2006 Carrie Mae interned & worked for a wearable clothing designer, Latifa Medjdoub, in San Francisco who made garments from felted merino wool.
2006-2007 Carrie Mae designed a series of felted slippers.
2015 Carrie Mae did an 11 day water fast that re-ignited her love for crochet. It helped soothe her nervous system and became part of her meditative rest.
2016 Carrie Mae met with Vicky Young, her Prescott College advisor from 200-2002 and Vicky mentioned her mother generating so much knit wear that she had to donate them to the thrift store.
2018 Carrie Mae had a studio week immersion where she read about Liza Lou moving to South Africa to work with beadwork ladies and a project in prison where she helped women learn a skill to make clay beads.
2018 Vision for Ponchos and Wall of Love. Half-day community crochet gatherings.
2019-2024 Purchased Merino Wool on Ebay and Farmers Markets and made 25-30 sample ponchos and wraps for final design. Testing size wool and crochet hook size.
2025 Chule Blankets donates hundreds of pounds of wool to Prayer Poncho.
A melding of the love from Betty Jane, Liza Lou projects and reflecting on Vicky's mother and feeling the loneliness and isolation of so many other elders.. CMR had the clear thought: Our elders can be part of an untapped resource of crocheters who we could bring connection to and they can help production and assemble the ponchos we wear imbued with their love and prayers.. a win/win for all. During reflection and meditation in 2018 Prayer Poncho vision was born. The Wall of Love (more on this) and the Half-Day-Crochet events (more on this too) are also created as part of the creative flow. CMR bought much bulk merino wool from ebay and began making sample sizes and dying the raw wool into natural shades. Sadly, PP was not launched before or during the pandemic (although it would have been so perfect) CMR was on the move, nomadic and not settled enough to launch and share yet.
